CLEAR LAKE, IOWA – One hesitates to attribute it to the presence of The Man Called Trump in this year's campaign but, all of a sudden, things seem to have become awfully loud and awfully frank out on the stump. The rules of rhetorical etiquette, which TMCT has fed into the woodchipper with transparent glee, are increasingly ignored in other venues as well. More than ever, it appears that the country has started thinking in one-syllable words and simple declarative sentences; how much plainspoken "authenticity" is evinced by a speech has become more significant than the actual policy substance of what is being said. 'Twas always thus, of course. But, this time around, the presence of TMCT has raised the stakes considerably. Just on Friday, for example, Carly Fiorina flirted with the polite fringes of anti-vaxxer trutherism, "Bobby" Jindal sprang to the defense of Confederate war memorials in New Orleans, employing what appears to be a non-existent law to do it, and Ben Carson, having been revealed as a hilarious hypocrite on the subject of fetal-tissue research, mounted a defense that was as plainspoken as it was preposterous – which is all that matters these days, I guess.

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And, of course, TMCT held a press conference and a campaign event in New Hampshire where he showed this passel of yoooooge loooooosers (!) how it's done.

On Fiorina:

"I promised I wouldn't say that she ran Hewlett Packard into the ground," Trump said. "I said I would not say it. That her stock value tanked. That she laid off tens of thousands of people and she got viciously fired. I said I would not say it. And that she then went out and ran against Barbara Boxer for senator of California, and it's a race that should have been won and she lost in a landslide, and I said, I will not say that, ok? So I'm not going to say it."

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On poor, gasping Rand Paul:

Rand Paul -- you have to understand -- is a disaster in the polls. He's a disaster on military and defense. He is getting decimated by everybody. And other than giving him a lot of money for an eye center at his request -- he asked me, could I have money? I said, absolutely. Because I thought it was worthwhile. But I gave him a lot of money for an eye center, which is very hypocritical when you think of it. But other than giving him a tremendous amount of money for his eye center, which I'm happy about, frankly, because I'm sure they do good work, I hope they do good work, he is doing so badly that he figures he has to attack Trump because I'm leading by a lot everywhere.

On, well, everybody else:

You know, I don't blame him. He is doing so poorly in the polls so he attacks the person -- you know, hey, look, I've been attack now by Perry of Texas. And he went peeing like a rocket ship except in the wrong direction. I was attacked by Lindsey Graham. And he had two points. Now he has zero. Now, Rand Paul has very few points. But I think he's going down, too.

It's over, ya buncha stupids. Inaugurate me now. Save the rush.

(Don't waste time trying to figure out how one pees like a rocket ship. I tried and I couldn't do it. Forget it, Jake. It's Trumptown.)

So, along come the Democratic candidates to the last place Buddy Holly ever sang, for something called, adorably, the Democratic Wing Ding and, wait a moment, here's Hillary Rodham Clinton chewing carbon steel over the various Javerts in pursuit of her back in Washington.

"It's not about Benghazi. And you know what, it's not about e-mails or servers either. It's about politics…I won't get down in the mud with them. I won't play politics with national security or dishonor the memory of those we lost. I won't pretend this is anything other than what it is: the same old partisan games we've seen so many times before. I don't care how many super PACs and Republicans pile on. I've been fighting for families and underdogs my entire life and I'm not going to stop now."

Bernie Sanders got authentic on the controversy that has been brought to his campaign by people associated with the #blacklivesmatter movement, reciting a litany made up of the victims of police violence. Sanders, of course, has minced fewer words than even Trump has, especially on the undeniable fact that the country is sliding inexorably towards oligarchy, but his willingness to "say the names" in this context, as demanded by the people who have heckled him at recent events, is a new and important change in his stump speech. And Martin O'Malley, despite lucklessly speaking to the backs of the huge portion of the crowd that was headed for the doors, was the only one of the three to go for the poetic – "We are part of the living and self-creating mystery, my friends, that is called the United States of America." – and benefitted not a little from the contrast.

"Authenticity" is one of those media conjuring words that mean very little outside the campaign bubble. Running for president – hell, running for any political office – is essentially an inauthentic exercise, especially within the new era of legalized influence peddling that has been inaugurated by the current Supreme Court. The demand for money is now so overwhelming that the candidates themselves cannot avoid being monetized themselves. And, if corporations are not people, then people are not supposed to be commodities, and that's pretty much where we are these days. There's an essential struggle within most of them that's coming closer and closer to the surface. (I'm not trying to make them objects of sympathy here. They all asked for this, and far too many of them have done far too little to arrest the process as it accelerated.) To paraphrase the lesson from Liberty Valance – when the product becomes the person, sell the product. The Man Called Trump has been doing this for three decades now. Small wonder he's ahead of the rest of them. On Saturday, Clinton, Sanders, and The Man Called Trump all will descend on the Iowa State Fair. Only Trump actually will come down out of the sky.